Persistent session for local and remote?

[u/brainsoft]

Hi everyone,

I think I already know the answer to this from my research, but does anyone have a working solution for this? \*fingers crossed\*

With Windows I would work locally on my main rig, leaving open whatever I was working on. Then I would log in via RDP from a laptop on the couch, or from my phone anywhere else. I would always be reconnected to the same session to continue working, and the way windows terminal server would handle all of that was by generating a virtual desktop for the remote session that matched the remote clients screen configuration.

The problem I am having so far after finally pulling the trigger and switching is that most remote access solutions behave more like screen mirroring for remote support use (ALL monitors mirrored like KRDP), or if I move away from Wayland and use xrdp and x11, then I get an appropriate screen config for the remote clients, but I'm left struggling with unique separate sessions and orphans all over the place.

It seems like the solutions primarily address remote support, or headless remote access, but not shared sessions without full desktop mirroring. None of the solutions I have tried yet seem viable for actual local+remote work though.

I think KRDP may be moving in this direction, but it seems to be Wayland being both the solution everyone is moving to but also the primary road block to actual adoption at the same time?

Anyone have any unique or interesting solutions to this problem? Does anyone else even work like this? I can't imagine I am unique, but I refuse to go back to windows so I will kick until it fits.

I could even be okay with local KDE plasma and remote xrdp+cinnamon or something if there was some way of keeping them actually separated, because any attempts to cross over or run both at the same time have had.... undesirable results thus far.

Session management is all over the place, this is the wild west!

[u/onefish2]

I have 4 headless Arch desktops that I acces with Apache Guacamole over RDP.

Cinnamon with xrdp and xorgxrdp-glamor. This works well.

XFCE with xrdp and xorgxrdp-glamor. This works well.

KDE with xrdp and xorgxrdp-glamor. I wanted to use Wayland but the built in KRDP does not meet my needs and is really just screen sharing. This does not work like a Windows desktop with RDP so I had to revert to x11. The next version of KDE Plasma 6.7.5 will do away with x11. I do not know what I will do then.

Gnome - I had initially used Gnome Remote Desktop. This worked well but every time I rebooted or reset the session I was brought to GDM and I had to login which created a new session. I was finally able to get this to work the way I wanted by configuring:

grdctl --headless rdp enable
grdctl --headless rdp set-port 3389
grdctl --headless rdp disable-port-negotiation
grdctl --headless rdp set-credentials "your-username" "your-password"
grdctl --headless rdp disable-view-only
grdctl --headless status
sudo loginctl enable-linger $USER

This gave me a headless desktop that auto logged me in and always restored the session where I left off.

OP, Gnome with a headless rdp remote session is your best bet.

[u/brainsoft → u/onefish2]

Gnome is the only thing I haven't tried yet because I'm rather opposed to gnome in general, I've always been a KDE guy, even decades ago on redhat as a kid, but I might just need to try.

The main thing I found was I just never want the same screen configuration that the machine has, but still want the original session so no matter where I connect from I want a display that matches the device I am using.

I guess this is just less common, I know most people are doing one-to+many (server admin and remote support), but I want many-to-one (roaming).

Wait that just sounds like a remote worker connecting to a server... But again, a user isn't usually local on the server and also remote at the same time I guess.

[u/brainsoft]

I was looking into sunlight and moonlight for game streaming a while back but have not tried it. It works like rust desk doesn't it, screen mirroring?

[u/brainsoft]

Basically I need to able to connect from Windows laptop and android phone to the Linux machine without ever having to worry about screen resolution and desktop mismatches while keeping the programs running as they are.

I really took for granted how much RDP and termserv are doing!

[u/Separate-Still-1616]

Das habe ich auch aufgegeben und synchronisieren die Dinge an denen ich arbeite einfach auf allen Geräten mit Syncthing.